Amazon Prime has released a show based on the multi-part game Fallout about the adventures of a girl, a soldier, and a zombie cowboy in a radioactive future. Stanislav Zelvensky is happy along with other fans of the game.
At the end of the 21st century, most of civilization is destroyed as a result of a global nuclear conflict. And 200 years later, Lucy McLean ( Ella Purnell ) is about to get married. Lucy grew up in Vault 33, one of the underground bunkers of the Vault-Tec corporation, where the lucky few, generation after generation, waited until they could come out (it seems like it’s already here!). On the day of a blind wedding with a kid from a nearby bunker, everything goes wrong, bandits led by a woman named Lee Moldaver ( Sarita Choudhury ) infiltrate the Vault, kill someone, and take Lucy's father Hank ( Kyle MacLachlan ), the caretaker of the Vault, with them.
Lucy has no choice but to go up in search of her dad, to post-apocalyptic California, where the ruins of cities are still poisoned by radiation, animals have mostly mutated into monsters, and people are divided into gangs and cults. Soon she meets a scientist ( Michael Emerson ) with a faithful dog and a secret that everyone seems to be hunting for. Firstly, the aforementioned Moldaver. Secondly, the paramilitary group Brotherhood of Steel, represented by Maximus ( Aaron Moten ), is a soldier with a good heart but a guilty conscience. And finally, the noseless cowboy once known as Cooper Howard ( Walton Goggins ). In antebellum America, he was a star of Westerns, and two centuries later continues to live as a ghoul (a kind of sentient zombie), a ruthless bounty hunter, and the best shot west of the Rockies.
Series based on video games, animation aside, are still an extremely rare phenomenon; they can be counted on one hand, and winning this race is not very honorable. So let's take the movies at the same time and declare: Fallout is the champion. The best thing that happened to computer games outside of computers. Being better than Alone in the Dark, Max Payne, and Sonic the Movie is not a big achievement, but Fallout is perhaps the first case of an adaptation that doesn’t just exploit the game, doesn’t cling to it frantically in any difficult situation (hello, “The Last of Us” ), and conducts a fascinating, lively dialogue with her on equal terms.
The plot is completely original but built from bricks familiar from the games: the heroine crawls out of the bunker in search of her father and finds herself in various adventures that completely change her picture of the world. There are new acquaintances ahead, family secrets, corporate conspiracies, as well as many small troubles: a fight with a monster, an escape from an insidiously programmed home robot, a visit to another Vault, using either dexterity or charisma.
At the same time, the scriptwriters, of course, do not have time for a hundred minor quests; the story is quite simple and is divided into several lines, which either run parallel or merge into one. Lucy isn't the only main character, but Ella Purnell is the face of the series and she's great. It was a good idea to make her primarily a comic character: a girl from a sterile bunker, where everyone smiles and apologizes (a separate scattering of gags is also related to sex), finds herself in a world of bandits, cannibals and mutant cockroaches.
The line about the guy from the Brotherhood of Steel is a little more, perhaps, designed for fans of the game who will be able to appreciate the criticism of the hierarchy of the Brotherhood and a hundred jokes about power armor, but there are surprises for everyone. For example, Michael Rapaport's excellent (sorry, short) performance against the radioactive bear Yao-Gai or the touching role of Thaddeus ( Johnny Pemberton ), Maximus's colleague. In the Vault, Lucy has a brother ( Moises Arias ), who takes part in another typical Fallout quest - together with his idiot friend, he tries to understand what is really happening in their bunker and the two neighboring ones. Here, the series, following the game, constantly balances between satire and horror.
The retro-futuristic scenery of the game (according to its concept, the American 1950s are forever in fashion) migrated into the series with minimal changes, if not completely untouched, and this is where the filmmakers have an advantage - this bizarre world has never looked so breathable and tangible. Those for whom Super Duper Mart, Red Rocket, or BlamCo Mac & Cheese are not an empty set of sounds will be guaranteed to be smitten. Behind the scenes, branded retro songs (“I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire” have to wait until the end of the second episode) and Johnny Cash sound ironically. Composer Ramin Djawadi makes precise use of fragments of Fallout's main themes.
It’s not even clear what to cling to here. Where are the super mutants and Deathclaws (I think in the second season)? There is not an infinite amount of action, but it is done as fun, cheeky, and colorful as everything else in this wonderful series - with limbs torn off and heads flying into bloody pieces. The dog is in place. The first aid kit is exactly as usual. Since war never changes and times are troubling, we can only hope that Amazon will be quicker than game maker Bethesda to have a second season released sometime in our lifetime.
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